If John Deere is only willing to sell lifetime licenses to operate their vehicles, thus putting the farmer at risk in ways like you described, why do farmers still buy these "licenses"?
Naively, they must represent some advantage (despite their shortcomings), otherwise John Deere wouldn't be able to sell these things.
[1] http://www.tennesseetractor.com/assets/Uploads/jd-timeline.j...
We'll see if farmers really care about this though, or whether it turns out to be something like "Replaceable Batteries" or "SD Flash slots" on smart phones.
The Wired article mentions that some farmers are preferring to buy old tractors without the electronics. This demand increases the value for the used market and should depress the value of new tractors. There will likely be a growth in the business of maintaining old tractors and, potentially, enough public awareness of the benefits of tractors without electronics that another manufacturer can step in.
Or it might fizzle. Markets don't solve every problem, but they usually solve the problems people are willing to pay for.
Also, I haven't bought a new car in many years. Is there something like a EULA buried in the small print? And I don't imagine buyers on the secondary market sign anything. Or will it become illegal to sell used cars because the software license doesn't allow for transfer?
In the EU? Only if TTIP gets signed.
There's a lot of strength to being incumbent in both of these areas.
The manufacturer has to have the deep pockets and stomach for a protracted battle - lots of folks "bleed green" and will only buy Deere. Deere is everywhere in the countryside - big marketing campaigns.
Deere and others also have large dealer networks. That is where the sales are made. Many of these dealers have been around for a really long time and have all of the customer access. You'd have to break into the network somehow.
You'd have to not only be able to make it, but have the cash on hand to sustain more than a few years of incredibly low sales and lack of distribution.
Long term, they may do significant damage, but it will take time to erode the built-up good will.
I'm just guessing here, but I know Deere produces some fairly sophisticated software that takes over head photos of crops and they have various services that offer advice on how to best farm different parts of a farmer's land. Some of that software interacts with their farm equipment (like it can signal the onboard software to maybe work more slowly in particularly dense parts of a crop and stuff like that.) I could see them trying to somehow protect that software investment and treat it as a lock-in where the device owners may want to use that service with other brands of equipment or something. From what I gather, it's a non-trivial amount of software that they've built that has some significant value.
They do. The difference is that farmers are far more likely to attempt a fix on their machine than the average car user. Also, since farmers use their tractors more than the average user uses their car, a tractor is part of a system, while a car typically is the system. As such, there are a lot of parts to integrate with and as a result, more places where the system can break.
> If John Deere is only willing to sell lifetime licenses to operate their vehicles, thus putting the farmer at risk in ways like you described, why do farmers still buy these "licenses"?
Because John Deere has a monopoly.
> Naively, they must represent some advantage (despite their shortcomings), otherwise John Deere wouldn't be able to sell these things.
Yes, that is naive. If you look to capitalism to solve the problems of people at the bottom, you'll almost always be disappointed.
That goes without saying that this issue is bigger than the tractor market. Car manufacturers are hopping on board and there are even fewer options for cars without protected computers in them. This issue is only getting more pressing as more daily objects become integrated with computer systems.
The whole OP is disingenuous - the issue is not who 'owns' the tractor. The issue is with the licence of the software that runs it. That doesn't change anything about the ownership of the tractor. Shoddy reporting, designed to appeal to the prejudices of their audience.